Radios reappear

Legendary status is usually beyond a band's grasp. It's most often bestowed in absentia, which is fine by Radio Birdman: that's where they've been for most of the past 30 years.

"Yes, the myth has snowballed to our advantage in most senses," singer Rob Younger agrees dryly. "We wouldn't be able to play now if that hadn't occurred."

The Sydney band's myth begins in the mist of punk-rock Dreamtime, circa 1974. It includes apocryphal affiliations with bikie culture, neo-fascism and a dramatic implosion in Britain a mere four years later.

For Younger, who formed Radio Birdman with American guitarist Deniz Tek and keyboard player Pip Hoyle as a reaction to the prevailing "bouffant-hair, strutting cock-rock routine" of the early '70s, the truth was sometimes scarier.

"There was a chapter of the Hells Angels in Sydney that started coming along to our gigs. . . . The main problem was they kept inviting us back to their clubhouse after shows and I had to come up with inventive reasons as to why I couldn't make it.

"I ran out of excuses one night and went along to this clubhouse where they had all their flags and insignia, all these bikes up the hallway dripping oil. It was pretty impressive until the guy pulled out a Supertramp album and said, 'How 'bout this one?' I was so scared of these guys I said, 'Yeah, that's great'."

Such easy listening commercial fodder was anathema to Radio Birdman's gritty outsider ethos, gleaned from sources as diverse as United States surf culture, Iggy Pop's Stooges and Lou Reed's Velvet Underground, years before the Sex Pistols made raw catharsis fashionable.

"We had a low opinion of the music scene in that we thought it lacked vitality," Younger says. "I can assure you there were no people in the band with any kind of Nazi leanings. That's complete rubbish."

Imaginary Nazis aside, there was no place for Radio Birdman in a local industry dominated by the cheesy pop and disco of Countdown.

They released their classic Radios Appear album on their own record label in '77, but split up in England a year later.

The band's early demise planted seeds for a substantial family tree that towered over Sydney's underground rock scene in the 1980s.

Younger started the highly regarded Hitmen with guitarist Chris Masuak, rejoined Tek to play in New Race and later formed the New Christs.

Radio Birdman was hence received as something of a supergroup of Sydney legends when they mounted an ostensibly one-off reunion tour in 1996.

Radio BirdmanPicture: Supplied

"We played hard and we came away happy," Tek said after that surprisingly explosive handful of shows. "That's a pretty good place to leave it. I'd hate to spoil it by turning into a cabaret act."

"Yeah, it's plain that that could easily turn out to be the case," Younger says as the band embraces another, more permanent phase.

"We're writing new material so we're not accused of being hacks. It would be a shame if people perceived it that way.

"I actually like playing music more than I used to. I was quite nervous and insecure for a long time there, just getting drunk and jumping about and not really trusting the songs, not really listening to anybody else."

Radio Birdman headline on Saturday night at this weekend's Meredith Festival.